Overview

We are glad to know that many East Asian countries are reforming their English educational system. EDR, in collaboration with the University of Massachusetts’s Applied Linguistics Department, has designed a teacher training plan to support this reform.

The University of Massachusetts Boston and EDR have developed effective solutions for a number of social problems which, together, can be called the Educational Divide. The increasing income gap between rich and poor families and skyrocketing costs of language education have contributed to a growing disharmony in fast developing societies such as South Korea and China. To solve the social problems of the English Divide we have come up with two major solutions for public schools:

English teaching methodology reform

English teacher training reform.

As the English teacher training may be more urgent, the English Teacher Training Program at the University of Massachusetts has been designed to quickly generate professional teachers who can teach English classes in the English language, a development which will effectively support a government’s English education reform initiative.

Curriculum

The full curriculum consists of two major components:

TESOL training courses

Spoken English Proficiency Upgrade courses.

The core curriculum is supplemented by cultural engagement with the Boston area (which is sometimes called “The Spirit of America”), and class observation or field training. This enriched study is to be followed by optional e-learning graduate courses which could lead to a master’s degree offered by the university.

Duration

The full program takes ideally six months, but the duration and the curriculum are adjustable through discussion with us if the trainees and their financial sponsors are under time or financial constraints.